Where old is mistaken for antique
Wonder what’s all the fuss about. First of all, I didn’t like a heavy prosthetic clad Amitabh in a Shoojit Sircar film. Shoojit Sircar is a master storyteller who weaves magic with his screenplay. So, it was kind of weird to see a man, that too with a caliber of Amitabh, in such heavy make-up. It’s understandable for a R. Balki movie like ‘Paa’, but Shoojit Sircar, hell, no! Guess all the talks about ‘Gulabo Sitabo’ was similar to ‘Soorarai Potru’ where both were a landmark film because it released in OTT. Otherwise, it felt like just another average joe.
‘Gulabo Sitabo’ is a boring film. Unfortunately, there is no better to put. In fact, this looks to be weakest of Shoojit Sircar films, only next to ‘Yahaan’. But ‘Yahaan’ was his debut feature and the director still didn’t have his style so he was just finding his ways so that’s pretty much forgivable. But ‘Gulabo Sitabo’ was too ambitious and it ended up being a bad painting which the maker considered to be a modern art. Guess there would be people defending this film too like how they do for any slow film but this film was outright boring.
It has some of the finest performers on screen. In fact, everyone who appeared on screen, whether their role was short or long were fabulous. Special mention to Farrukh Jaffar, what an actor she is and how underutilized. Begum was the only spot of charm in an otherwise dull movie. Even though it was a black comedy and all that, I was happy that Begum wins at last.
The bloating fact of the movie is that it’s a black comedy. But when a genre like black comedy becomes a genre movie, it has to be handled very carefully. Black comedies are something which must make us think, which must make us feel whether we should be laughing or crying for a scene. Or control our laughter and feel proud when others don’t get it. But this time, that kind of feeling was hardly there for any scenes. Maybe I was on the other side of spectrum, the clueless gang. But I don’t think so, there is even another side. It was straightforward and mundane. The opening scene where Chunnan “Mirza” Nawab (Amitabh Bachchan) steals the bulb and the climax scene where he and Baankey Rastogi (Ayushmann Khurrana) look at the haveli were some classic black comedy scenes which should’ve made us laugh a lot more.
Ayushmann Khurrana underplays his character and as usual blends in the film. So much so that, here we don’t feel he’s a lead. He hardly has any impact. It was good to see actors taking such “unimportant” characters. With the way the film took its own sweet time to establish, I thought it’s going to be a movie like ‘October’ which is my absolute favorite but ‘Gulabo Sitabo’ ended up being timid and unresponsive, especially after we get to know what’s the story about. All the walks to and fro for legal procedures were just like those mundane uninteresting walks one takes to go to office.
Look at the magic in ‘October’. It’s one of the toughest films to make. The leading lady falls off from a great height at the very start of the film and probably that’s the highest point of the film, there is no “action” as such in the entire film after that. There is no surficial high point. Everything happens inside and off screen and that transforms to us too. How tough it is to visualize such a concept and what great acting by Varun Dhawan too. That’s the film which made me take notice of him and want to complete his entire filmography.
Another classic film of his which I watched without knowing about the greatness of the director was ‘Piku’ and how wonderful was Amitabh in that. So naturally I was intrigued for Amitabh’s performance in this film too but expect for that one scene where he explains why Begum married there, there wasn’t any scene where I could enjoy the acting. Too much prosthetics to even feel that it’s Amitabh out there. Like I said before, it was okay for a fun film like ‘Paa’ but not for a heavy film like ‘Gulabo Sitabo’.
constantscribbles 